superheroes

An hour ago, she was a prisoner. Bound to a man, to his city, shackled by a love she had tried to kill. Now, she is free. She is beyond her pain, her need, beyond her self. Yet, even as she swims deeply in meditation, a part of her remains alert. She feels a breeze where none should be . . . hears a curtain rustle lightly, briefly. In an instant, she is ready. For she is Elektra–mercenary, bounty hunter, assassin. Mistress of the deadly art of Ninjutsu. She is Elektra–and she is no man’s fool. –“Gantlet,” Daredevil no. 175, October 1981

In the early 1980s, one of the hottest young comic artists on the scene was Frank Miller, who beginning with issue no. 158 had taken over Marvel’s Daredevil. Blind lawyer Matt Murdock by day, radar-enhanced superhero by night, Daredevil is a prime example of the ability of a strong artistic team and bold direction to lift B-list characters to popularity and make them relevant. With Miller both writing and penciling, and inking duties given to Klaus Janson (with whom Miller would have a long professional relationship), Daredevil went from an also-ran to a must-read, a moody, complex urban gothic melodrama, the lead character closer to Batman than to Spider-Man (to whom he had usually been compared).

Most Marvel comics were centered in New York City, and for Daredevil’s rough Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood Miller provided a gritty, ground-level texture, drawing from his own experience as a newcomer to the city in the Taxi Driver era (compare these depictions of New York to the descriptions in Eric Van Lustbader’s contemporaneous novel The Ninja), full of local color and making the city backdrop an essential part of the atmosphere. Miller shifted the viewpoint between different characters, framed the action in visually striking ways, and tightened the screws on Murdock/Daredevil to make his choices more dramatic and compelling. Ultimately he would put his own stamp on all future depictions of the character. In doing so he showed the influence of Will Eisner and Neal Adams, among others, but he was also vocal in interviews about his enthusiasm for the classic manga Lone Wolf and Cub by Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, at a time when Japanese comics were barely present in the American market. His interest in Japanese culture also found its way into the pages of Daredevil, which became one of the key avenues for the influx of ninjas into American comics.

In issue no. 168, dated January 1981, Miller introduced one of his most enduring creations: Elektra Natchios, once the great love of Murdock’s life (revealed in an extensive flashback to the pair’s college years) but who, after the death of her Greek diplomat father, had become first a ninja and then a freelance bounty hunter. They cross paths while both searching for the same criminal: Daredevil to save an innocent man on trial, Elektra to collect a bounty on the criminal’s head. The delicate dance that ensues over the next year’s worth of issues, with Elektra unable to kill Daredevil and Daredevil unable to save Elektra from her choices, plays on the conflict between the heart and one’s duty and the inescapability of the past. (True to comic book practice, Elektra would die and be resurrected several times over the years.) Elektra was immediately popular; in addition to the action and Elektra’s undeniable sex appeal, the soap opera elements (never far away in Marvel comics) and the strong depiction of Elektra’s side of the story drew in female readers as well. Readers loved Elektra. (It’s also worth noting that while Miller was one of the main creators responsible for the increasingly dark tone of comics in the 1980s, these stories don’t feel gratuitously bleak or shocking like so many later “grim and gritty” comics, including many by Miller himself. Perhaps it was the influence of the still-active Comics Code, or that Miller’s mindset hadn’t turned quite so dark yet himself, but these issues still feel fresh and vibrant, with the joy of a maturing artist discovering new possibilities in his medium.)

The Elektra arc makes for an interesting study of the ways ninja lore and traditional martial arts storylines could be blended with larger-than-life superhero concepts. Indeed, in its more fantastical form the ninja movie is already a kind of superhero tale, with ninjas and martial arts masters engaging in superhuman acrobatics and demonstrating seemingly magical powers. Daredevil’s super-sensitive hearing is well-established, able to detect people hiding just by listening for their heartbeat; the ninja, able to slow his heartbeat and go for long stretches without breathing, remaining perfectly still, makes for a formidable challenge. And Miller clearly enjoys choreographing fight scenes that pit Daredevil’s acrobatic fighting style against the ninjas’, using his billy club much as the ninjas use bo, bokken, or nunchaku. It’s a good fit.

As I mentioned in discussion of Enter the Ninja, ninja movies rely on visual cues such as different-colored uniforms to distinguish combatants; in real life, the ninja’s need for stealth would rule out bright and flashy colors (and forget about Elektra’s long, flowing hair), but in fantasy the ninja gi is a “second skin,” just like a superhero’s costume, relaying something about the ninja’s character and narrative function. Ordinary rank-and-file ninjas (genin, or “agents”) mostly get plain black uniforms with little to distinguish them as individuals; important characters get different colors, or more elaborate armor, or at least an insignia. This is true in the comics as well as in the movies: Elektra, the former ninja, wears a red leotard and head scarf (when she’s not in disguise, that is). It is essentially her hero costume, putting her on the same narrative level as Daredevil, the villain Bullseye, or the other superpowered main characters. In addition to being visually distinctive, her red scarf connects to an early form of Matt Murdock’s Daredevil mask he wears in the flashback (and of course both their costumes are red); whether they like it or not, they are connected, their destinies intertwined. Finally, Elektra has a signature weapon, a pair of sai (swords with forked blades), although like all ninjas she is skilled with many different weapons.

By contrast, most of the members of the “Hand,” the ninja clan with which Elektra trained but which now hunts her as a traitor, are nondescript, standard-issue ninjas. There are several comic book touches in their depiction, however, the most startling of which is their tendency to dissolve into mist when killed, highlighting their uncanny nature. The ninjas’ habit of speaking as one, finishing each others’ sentences like Huey, Dewey, and Louie, also highlights the uniformity and groupthink the Hand requires of its members. Only one agent of the Hand gets the distinctive costume treatment: Kirigi, a ninja among ninjas and the boss whom Elektra must defeat, and whose superhuman strength and endurance is visually signaled by his large size and hooded purple gi. As with the lesser members of the Hand, the question of Kirigi’s humanity is left open, with suggestions that he is immortal, or perhaps a demon. Frank Miller would delve much deeper into the mystical dimensions of ninjutsu in later stories, but in this early stretch the Hand make for a colorful and slightly spooky set of antagonists. (The Wolverine limited series, a collaboration between Miller and Uncanny X-Men writer Chris Claremont, would also feature the Hand as a worldly rather than mystical force: in taking the clawed mutant Wolverine to Japan and suggesting that he had connections with the samurai in his past, Miller and Claremont made an essential contribution to the character’s depiction. In that particular story the Japanese ethos of bushido is a fresh lens through which Wolverine’s animalistic nature and personal code of honor could be examined.)

Epilogue: Just as Kurt Cobain said that he knew he had made it when “Weird Al” Yankovic parodied one of his songs, so the popularity of Frank Miller’s approach can be confirmed by an unlikely spoof that has turned out to be as enduring as Elektra. In 1984, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird produced a self-published 40-page black and white comic book. They dedicated it to their heroes, Jack Kirby and Frank Miller, and riffed affectionately on Miller’s style and themes. Miller’s ninjas were part of the “hand,” so Eastman’s and Laird’s ninja villains were the “Foot clan.” Their four heroes narrated their adventures in grim, self-serious monologues, playing an outlandishly cartoony premise completely straight; one of them even wielded Elektra’s weapons of choice, a pair of sai. Eastman and Laird hoped that their modest effort might sell a few copies and entertain their friends. Little did they know that their creation would become a smash hit in the indie comics world, inspiring their own knock-offs, and would even be adapted into multiple television cartoon series and feature films. The franchise they gave birth to is still known by the same title they gave their initial 40-page book: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And, as Paul Harvey says, now you know the rest of the story. This concludes Ninjanuary and my biweekly exploration of the shadowy world of the ninja (as reflected in pop culture, at least). Thanks for reading and following along, and if you haven’t read my previous installments you can click on the “Ninjanuary” tag in the column next to this article to see all of them. I’ve got a few things planned for the spring, so check back here or follow me on Twitter for updates, but farewell for now, or should I say, Sayonara?

On the surface, the banker Favraux appears to have a charmed life. He is about to celebrate the engagement of his daughter, the widowed single mother Jacqueline, to the Marquis de la Rochefontaine. A widower himself, he has the attention of his grandson’s charming new governess, Marie Verdier. And he can rely on the loyal service of his right hand man, Vallieres. However, not all is as it seems: “Marie Verdier” is actually the career criminal Diana Monti, and with her partner Morales she schemes to take possession of Favraux’s fortune. The Marquis, heavily in debt, also sees Jacqueline as a route to enriching himself with the Favraux fortune and nothing more. As for Favraux himself, his past is about to catch up with him!

An old man, just released from a long imprisonment, appears at Favraux’s doorstep during a party celebrating Jacqueline’s engagement. Pierre Kerjean demands to speak to Favraux, for it was the banker’s bad advice and criminal involvement that led Kerjean to the manipulations for which he was jailed; his wife is dead and his son has turned to a life of crime under an assumed name. Favraux rejects Kerjean, saying, “If you have any claims to make, bring them before a judge.” Later, adding injury to insult, the banker runs over the old man with his car on his way to Paris. As of yet, nothing can touch Favraux’s complacency.

All of that changes when Favraux receives a message: for the crimes upon which he built his fortune (including stock manipulation and promoting false prospects, the results of which claimed many direct and indirect victims), the banker is to donate half his wealth to the Public Assistance Bureau or face the consequences. The note is signed “Judex” (Latin for “judge”) and gives Favraux a deadline of 10 pm the following night. Favraux calls in his regular detective, but finds that the agency has been taken over by the deceased detective’s nephew, Cocantin, who is at best inexperienced and at worst a bumbler. Cocantin does his best, but he only manages to spy Favraux and the governess meeting in secret. At Jacqueline’s engagement dinner, as the clock strikes ten, Favraux drinks a toast and immediately falls dead.

Who was responsible? Is Kerjean the mysterious “Judex,” or is it someone yet unseen? Should Cocantin reveal the anonymous threats to Jacqueline, who now stands to inherit the Favraux fortune? There are many twists and turns yet to unfold before the mystery is solved, and many parties with conflicting interests in the outcome, but the stage is set by the end of this Prologue to the 1916 silent serial Judex, written (with Arthur Benède) and directed by Louis Feuillade!

Following her father’s death, Jacqueline learns the truth about her inheritance, tainted by Favraux’s many crimes. She donates the entire sum to the Public Assistance Bureau and moves out of Les Sablons, the family estate, taking up a humble position as a piano teacher under an assumed name while her son lives with his former nursemaid in the country. Her fiancé, Rochefontaine, breaks their engagement, as he was only interested in her fortune. Before she leaves Les Sablons for the last time, the telephone rings: she hears her father’s voice, asking for her forgiveness! Has she gone mad, or could it be that Favraux lives?

Yes, as Diana Monti and her gang discover when they become suspicious and open his coffin, Favraux is not actually dead! Poisoned with an elixir that mimicked death, he was removed from his grave by the one and only Judex (and his brother . . . Roger) and is secretly held in a chamber beneath the Château-Rouge (the “red castle,” the outdoor shots of which are memorably tinted blood-red).

Judex (played by René Cresté), when we see him, is a tall, lean-faced figure in a hat and cloak: unlike Fantômas, Judex has no need to cover his face, as he is a stranger to anyone he might encounter, or so it seems. Like many of the literary proto-superheroes he resembles, Judex shows mastery of a range of scientific skills and has seemingly supernatural ways of knowing his enemies’ movements and secrets, in addition to the bravery and strength we would expect of such a character. His high-tech lair (behind a secret entrance, of course) is the most fantastical conceit in this serial, and it is quite forward-thinking for 1916: Favraux’s cell is equipped with a mirror through which he can be surveilled, mounted on a fixture that moves so that there is nowhere in his cell that he cannot be seen (the mirror looks startlingly like a modern flat-screen television: recall the connection between television and fantasies of long-distance viewing even in later serials).

The mirror can also display writing in “letters of fire” entered on a typewriter-like console so that Judex can send messages to his prisoner. (The Turner Classic Movies restoration I watched uses plain block lettering to recreate these messages in English, just as the letters and other documents shown in the film are rendered in English. Frankly, the lettering looks kind of bad, like something your local TV station would slap on a car commercial–I would rather see the original image, if it is still extant, with subtitles added, but other than this impressionistic poster I am unable to turn up a picture of what the “letters of fire” originally looked like.)

Judex’s heroism is ambiguous (he is “a terribly calculating and cruel righter of wrongs,” in Georges Franju’s words): we first encounter him threatening and then kidnapping Favraux, but he also keeps a watchful eye on Jacqueline. Seeing her give up her fortune, Judex commutes Favraux’s sentence from death to life imprisonment. The loss of Favraux’s fortune spoils the plans of more than one character, and Jacqueline is newly vulnerable as a working parent of limited means. Once events (largely set in motion by Diana Monti) endanger Jacqueline, Judex appears on the scene, rescuing and protecting her. It is several chapters before we learn who Judex is–he is secretly someone quite close to Jacqueline, in disguise, and has fallen in love with her–and more before we learn his motivation, revealed in flashback: while he and his brother Roger were boys, their father, a wealthy count, was ruined financially by Favraux’s stock manipulation. He committed suicide, just minutes before a messenger arrived with news of a gold mine strike that would revive the family’s fortune (as with many superheroes, Judex’s real superpower is his wealth). Their mother set her sons on a mission of revenge against Favraux, a mission that would take until their adulthood to conclude. But Jacqueline remains ignorant of these developments, and we see Judex live a double life, unable to tell her the truth about the man whose name–Judex–she has come to hate, even as she recognizes her father’s corruption: classic alter-ego business.

As the follow-up to the successfulLes Vampires, Judex includes many Feuillade regulars in the cast, as well as themes and set pieces familiar from Les Vampires and the earlier Fantômas films. Masks and disguise continue to play a central role, even if the treatment is generally more down to earth than in the earlier films. Favraux is played by Louis Leubas, who played Satanas in Les Vampires; Roger, Judex’s brother, is played by Édouard Mathé, the hero of the earlier serial; Cocantin is played by Marcel Lévesque, Les Vampires’ Mazamette; and Diana Monti is played by Musidora, given an even larger role here than that of Irma Vep. Another member of the Feuillade repertory company, René Poyen, star of the popular “Bout de Zan” series, also appears as the “Licorice Kid,” a streetwise urchin who befriends Jacqueline’s son Jean (played by the painfully adorable Olinda Mano); unlike in Les Vampires, Poyen doesn’t just guest star–once he appears in Chapter Two, he’s in it for the long haul and has a complete arc.

In fact, almost everyone in this serial has a complex role and subplots of their own, distinguishing Judex from both the earlier Feuillade serials and contemporary action serials: the chapters, while still episodic, and usually centered around a single incident (Jacqueline is abducted; little Jean runs away to Paris; etc.), serve to advance the plot through the characters’ development and their relationships with each other rather than by running them through a gauntlet of action-adventure set pieces (chases, perils, stunts, etc.). Judex still contains many of those features, and is very entertaining from that perspective, but it is not primarily driven by cliffhangers. Rather, most chapters end with an open-ended rhetorical question (Should Cocantin reveal the threats against Favraux? Who is Judex?) or a simple “To be continued,” and it complicates the simple good vs. evil narrative by integrating those questions into a story in which justice is ultimately tempered with mercy. (The last chapter is titled “Love’s Forgiveness,” not “Judex Gives the Bad Guys What-For.”) Diana Monti is the only purely wicked character (“Forever a Delilah!” the title card reads at one point, when she draws Morales back into their scheme after he has had second thoughts), but everyone else, including Judex, occupies a moral landscape with shades of gray.

One could imagine a contemporary American serial like The Perils of Pauline focused on getting Jacqueline into and out of danger: first she loses her father to an unknown assailant, then is abducted by outlaws, and so forth; an action serial of the 1930s might have presented Cocantin, straight-faced, as the protagonist, solving the mystery of Favraux’s apparent death while tangling with Diana Monti and the mysterious Judex, perhaps learning that Judex is on his side only in the last chapter; finally, anytime after the 1940s, we might have had a film with Judex himself at the center, either in the manner of pulp heroes like the Shadow or as a costumed superhero. The serial Feuillade made is more complicated than any one of those, however: it contains strands of all of them, woven together such that no one strand could carry the tale’s full complexity. With its humanist emphasis on individual character and sensitive probing of the motives and morality of revenge, and its shifts of perspective between multiple characters’ viewpoints, Judex is ultimately novelistic, even epic, a tale of multi-generational reconciliation in the vein of Victor Hugo despite its pulpy trappings.

Judex has been described as a return to the countryside for Feuillade after the intense urbanism of Les Vampires, and that is true: along with the leisurely pace, the nostalgic return to old, forgotten places such as Kerjean’s abandoned mill and the empty halls of Les Sablons after Favraux’s apparent death cement the impression of a Romantic novel brought to life, complete with digressions, back stories for many of the characters, and bits of character business worthy of Dickens (the secretary of the detective agency still mourning his late employer with his oversized handkerchief, for example). The few turns toward the city are presented in a rosy light: even a child can feel safe alone on the streets of Paris, and the Licorice Kid’s repertoire of street skills extends to cadging produce from stalls and hitching rides on the back of taxis, nothing more. Diana Monti and Morales meet in a cozy café rather than the frenetic dance hall environment of Irma Vep’s Howling Cat.

Feuillade’s cinematic language is also more naturalistic in Judex, or perhaps it just seems so from this vantage because it is more modern; ironically, more frequent cutting within scenes allows for them to be extended and contributes to a relaxed rhythm, and the use of close-ups and medium shots allow the actors to play their roles with greater subtlety and project their emotions to each other rather than to the camera; there is very little of the mugging toward the audience that can be seen in the Fantômas films and in Les Vampires. Self-reflexive images of the cinema itself (a favorite device in the other Feuillade films I’ve seen) are absent, although many shots are framed through doorways or arches, creating a proscenium effect; the sparing use of special effects is limited to Judex’s lair, a sort of magical space where Feuillade still feels free to play around.

Ultimately, at least based on first impressions, I preferred the arch, urban modernism of Les Vampires to the pastoral sentiment of Judex, but that is a matter of personal taste. And in the long run one could argue that Judex, with its tortured antihero, has had a greater influence, anticipating many later superhero stories. Of course, there’s the whole brooding loner thing, with the hero using his wealth to strike at the criminal element from his secret underground lair, avenging the death of a parent while adopting a fearsome public persona, because God forbid we get through one of these columns without mentioning Batman. But Batman shares many of the characteristics of Judex–making up in wealth, scientific ingenuity, and mastery of disguise what he lacks in actual superpowers–with other heroes of the pulp era, so it’s not necessary to draw a direct line. (It’s also worth noting that, with a few exceptions, Judex rarely resorts to direct violence in this serial: his force is that of applying pressure discreetly and making things happen.)

The case for influence is clearer when looking at Sam Raimi’s Darkman and Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta. In both cases (leaving aside some obvious visual similarities), a wounded loner relies on disguise and secrecy to protect the woman he loves from a larger threat, in the case of V even keeping her in a kind of protective custody, as Judex does in a late chapter of this serial (V for Vendetta obviously complicates this formula quite a bit and calls its hero’s methods into question, but like much of Moore’s work it is fair to call it a deconstruction, and I suspect Judex is one of the many influences drawn from). A strong strain of the nineteenth-century novel tradition is the Gothic, and Judex, with its secret conspiracies, crumbling castle, characters haunted (even cursed) by the sins of the previous generation, and scenes of captivity and escape, provided one blueprint for adapting its themes to motion pictures, even if ultimately people were more influenced by the hat and cape.

What I Watched: Judex (Gaumont, 1916)

Where I Watched It: Flicker Alley’s 2-DVD set from 2004. In addition to restoring the film, this version includes a new score for full orchestra by composer Robert Israel, drawing themes from compositions by Charles-Valentin Alkan and others, as well as original music. Israel’s theme for Diana Monti is particularly juicy, like something from Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera score.

No. of Chapters: 12 chapters of varying length, plus a Prologue and Epilogue

Best Chapter Title: “The Fantastic Dog Pack” (Chapter Three), in addition to having the best chapter title, is also the most purely fun episode in the serial. Jacqueline had been abducted by Diana Monti and Morales in the previous chapter, a plight Judex only discovered by the happy accident of the release of a pair of homing pigeons he had given to Jacqueline in case of trouble. Arriving at her apartment and finding her missing, he quickly puts his dog on the scent and leads a pack of hounds to the villa where Jacqueline is being held.

As soon as the unknowing concierge opens the gate, the dogs rush in and flush out the outlaws, who escape through a hidden tunnel. Judex doesn’t bother following them, focusing on Jacqueline’s safety, but Diana and Morales are soon met by a poodle on its hind legs, carrying a warning from Judex to leave Jacqueline alone or suffer her father’s fate: the world’s cutest death threat.

Best Peril: While Judex is not constructed purely around stunts and spectacle, there are several sequences of action and danger, and most chapters finds either Jacqueline, her son, or Judex himself in a scrape from which they must be rescued or get themselves out of trouble. The most complex set piece is the struggle aboard the Eaglet in Chapter Eleven (“The Water Goddess”). Judex is taken by boat to Diana Monti’s ship to plead his case to Favraux: give up and return with Judex to his house, where Favraux’s daughter and grandson are safe. After an argument, Judex is taken by surprise and bound to a pole, a hood covering his face. Diana and Morales step outside the room and plot to kill Judex later. Little do they know, however, that Daisy Torp, Cocantin’s former fiancée (and a character who enters the film quite late), has swum out to the ship and has seen the whole thing through a porthole. Sneaking onto the ship, she unties Judex so that when Morales checks on him, he turns the table on him and ties him up in his place. When Diana has her gang throw the still tied and hooded victim overboard, she has no idea that she has just sentenced her partner in crime to death . . . until Judex appears to confront her!

Sample Dialogue: “I am the former owner of this house and you will not tarnish it with crime, as sure as my name is Pierre Kerjean!” –Chapter Five, “The Tragic Mill”

Judex Sallies Forth: Louis Feuillade made a sequel to Judex the following year, The New Mission of Judex. It is still extant, and I’ll write about it if I can track down a copy. A 1934 remake was directed by Maurice Champreux; I haven’t seen it, either.

In 1963, director Georges Franju remade the serial as a highly personal feature film. Judex was rarely seen by then, so Franju’s film served as an homage to a past master and a reminder to the public of a hero who had once been fashionable to the point of mania. Franju’s version conveys most of the major plot points while condensing the story (Judex’s family back story is omitted), but it is really focused on atmosphere. It also nods to Les Vampires, having Diana Monti (played by Francine Bergé) wear Irma Vep’s black catsuit for several sequences, and introduces a few Felliniesque touches. I intend at some point to write about latter-day spoofs of and tributes to the serials, including Franju’s Judex, but my recent exploration of Feuillade has revealed to me just how much I still have to explore in that area, particularly the various modern Fantômas features.

What Others Have Said: “Oedipal complications abound. The banker Favraux’s daughter learns of her father’s treachery; Judex’s mother is an overbearing figure, intent on keeping the son focused on his oath to the father; the son of Kerjean betrays his father; the detective Cocantin constructs his own adoptive family. Indeed, the few figures doomed to die in Judex either have no visible family or have betrayed their familial relations. On the other hand, a villain can be redeemed because he loves his family.” –Jan-Christopher Horak, “Judex: An Introduction,” included in the Flicker Alley DVD release

What’s Next: Summer is over, but I still have one more serial to write about this year: Tailspin Tommy in the Great Air Mystery, which I will probably get to in November. As always, thanks for reading!

On the docks of a seaport close to a Near Eastern jungle, Ted Arnold watches animal trapper Nat Coleman loading crates of live leopards and other animals onto a ship. Suddenly, a cable snaps, and a heavy load crashes to the dock! Suspecting foul play, Ted spies an Arab workman panic and run away from the scene, and follows him into the city. Tracking the suspicious dockhand to a house and confronted by a beautiful woman, Ted is surprised when Nat Coleman himself, the man’s employer, catches up to them and vouches for his workman. The Arab’s name is Omar, and he has been an employee of Coleman’s since stumbling out of the jungle, haunted by a fear he refuses to name. In this instance, he ran because he thought the men who sought his life had intended for the sabotaged crate to fall on him. Trusting Coleman’s word but eager to discover Omar’s secret, Ted gladly accepts Coleman’s invitation to be a guest at his jungle compound. This is but his first step into a tangled web of international intrigue that involves a dethroned Caliph, a subversive foreign plot to enslave the jungle tribes, and even an alliance with the secretive guardian of the jungle himself, Captain Africa!

In the age of Black Panther (or really any time in the last fifty years or so), the idea of a white hero calling himself “Captain Africa” sounds comically tone-deaf, but we have already encountered African-set “white savior” heroes in the serials, and this one follows a long tradition. The heroism of Captain Africa, “a strange being whom the natives fear, yet worship” (Chapter One), is an example of the “white man’s burden,” living in the jungle, settling disputes, and (most importantly) protecting the innocent tribes of the area from outsiders who might exploit them, and nobly asking for nothing in return (except the tribes’ absolute deference, of course). As such he is instantly recognizable as a thinly-veiled gloss on the Phantom, the long-running comic strip hero created by Lee Falk, and who had starred in a Columbia serial twelve years earlier. Rather than pay to license the character from King Features again (as one of the very last theatrical serials ever produced, Captain Africa was made long after the era in which studios spent much money on them), Columbia instead created their own version of the jungle guardian, his gaudy honorific an alias for an alias. (Columbia wasn’t the only studio to play this game: Republic had “Don Daredevil” replace Zorro, for example.)

It had been a while since I watched The Phantom, so I went back through my old notes to compare the two serials. Let’s see: the Phantom is attacked by a lion; Captain Africa is attacked by a lion. The Phantom is almost crushed by a portcullis, only to roll out of the way just in time; Captain Africa is almost crushed by a portcullis, only to roll out of the way just in time. The Phantom fights a gorilla; Captain Africa . . . hmm, I’m starting to see a pattern here. For the most part, Captain Africa’s costume is different enough from the Phantom’s to avoid confusion (or litigation) up close. It sort of looks like the Phantom costume you might throw together at the last minute for a Halloween party: instead of a skin-tight bodysuit, he wears a jersey and breeches. Captain Africa’s headgear resembles one of those old-time leather football helmets, and paired with goggles, well, the original Phantom could probably count on his lookalike to run errands in his place on dark nights. At the same time, when compared side by side, the shots from the two serials are clearly different: it is the plot points that are recycled, not the scenes of the Phantom in action. (See the comments below regarding the conflict over rights, which goes a long way toward explaining why whole scenes might have been filmed, only to be cut into the stingiest flashbacks.)

The way the title characters are presented in their respective serials is also different: The Phantom is told from the hero’s point of view, beginning with the death of the old Phantom and covering his son’s assumption of the hero’s name and identity (one of the conceits of the Phantom being that it is a persona adopted by generations of fathers and sons, making it seem as if he were a single immortal being). The main protagonist of Captain Africa, however, is Ted Arnold (Rick Vallin), covert operative for a secret, unnamed organization; Captain Africa (John Hart) appears in every chapter, sometimes briefly and sometimes extensively, but he is at first an unknown quantity, a sort of guest star in his own movie, and once Ted wins the confidence of Omar and his displaced Caliph, he must convince Captain Africa to join in the project of restoring the Caliph to his throne. (We eventually learn Captain Africa’s backstory, and it is similar to Ted’s: after a heroic wartime career, under orders from his superiors he assumed the identity of Captain Africa and convinced the natives of his “magical” power in order to keep the peace in the region–there is no hint of a multi-generational tradition.)

So, playing along, what does happen in Adventures of Captain Africa? Working with Nat Coleman (Bud Osborne), Ted follows Omar (Ben Welden) to a rendezvous with the exiled Caliph (Paul Marion), who relates the story of his overthrow by a usurper only referred to as “the tyrant.” The Caliph, Abdul al-Hamid, and his daughter, Princess Rhoda (June Howard)–exoticism only goes so far, I guess–escaped to live as nomads in the desert with a handful of loyal retainers, avoiding the bands of outlaws and slave traders that rule the desert, as well as patrols by the tyrant’s guards. There they await the opportunity to return to their homeland and return Hamid to his throne. (All of this is conveyed by voiceover accompanied by stock footage from desert swashbuckling epics.)

Ted is convinced that Hamid, in addition to being the rightful Caliph, would be a force for peace in the region. With the help of Captain Africa (who, in a parallel story, works to prevent subversives from provoking a rebellion among the jungle tribes–the same subversives who are in league with the tyrant who dethroned Hamid), Ted convinces Omar to break his vow of silence since they already know all about Hamid’s position, and presents himself as an ally. From then on, Ted, Omar, and Captain Africa work together on the Caliph’s behalf (Nat Coleman retires from the action to continue running his business once the alliance is cemented), seeking loyalists in the tyrant’s capital city and fighting off the subversive elements who would seek to enslave both the jungle tribes and the Arabs of the desert.

The resulting adventure is a mélange of Arabian Nights-style swashbuckling and jungle adventure: despite taking place in 1955, Adventures of Captain Africa feels much older. Of course the reliance on stock footage is a big part of that, but the typical avoidance of specific politics is another. My guess is that the unnamed political organization for which Ted Arnold works is meant to be the CIA, and the similarly unnamed subversives who promise freedom to the jungle natives but who, Ted warns, have enslaved every other population they have come in contact with, are meant to represent Soviet communism, and both the tribes and the Caliph’s people are a football tossed between them. But really, all you need to know is that there are good guys and bad guys. The various people of the desert wear traditional caftan and burnous, ride horses, and fight with wicked, curved scimitars; the jungle tribesmen are the kind of loincloth-clad, spear-throwing savages typically depicted in jungle movies. Only the white men use guns. In short, it takes place in serial never-neverland, and a more simplified version of it than most.

The reliance on stock footage and voiceover has a distancing effect, as well. In the best serials, editing and camera work give the action a thrilling immediacy, a feeling that you are there, watching or participating in the scene. From the first chapter, however, when Nat Coleman describes his first meeting with Omar and several mysterious incidents of sabotage to Ted, the tone is one of rambling digressions and things that happened in the past or to other people, with frequently thin narrative reasons for including one scene or another, except, of course, for the fact that the footage is on hand. (It doesn’t help that Coleman isn’t the most dynamic narrator, and it’s a relief when, after a few chapters, he disappears from the story.) The serial that I was most reminded of was not The Phantom, but The New Adventures of Tarzan, from twenty years before.

A few of these scenes are interesting from a technical perspective, including the use of rear projection to insert Coleman or other characters into the foreground of the old footage, as in Coleman’s flashback to a lion attack in his own bedroom. Even when the action shifts to the present, the early chapters are full of jungle business inserted so that Ted and Coleman have something to point out and talk about while they walk from one location to another: various animals, the daily routine of a rubber plantation, a police raid on a riverboat carrying contraband rubber. Coleman explains that there has been a campaign of rubber theft by well-organized gangs. “Do you suppose your unknown enemies are involved in it?” Ted asks, to which Coleman replies, “If they are, I wish they’d stay with it and leave me alone,” acknowledging that these scenes are nothing more than padding. As always, there is something magical in the way whole worlds can be stitched together out of unrelated footage, but Captain Africa shows that you can only stretch leftovers so far before they go stale.

What I Watched:Adventures of Captain Africa (Columbia, 1955)

Where I Watched It:Captain Africa was among the bootleg DVDs I bought and went through a few years ago, but for whatever reason I didn’t get around to watching this one until now. However, the transfer was quite poor indeed, full of missing frames and even whole scenes. Luckily for me, the whole serial was on YouTube in better (although still not pristine) quality.

No. of Chapters: 15

Best Chapter Title: What Captain Africa lacks in originality, it makes up in exclamation points: every chapter title ends with a bang (as does the serial’s subtitle, “Mighty Jungle Avenger!”)! So whether Ted and company face a “Midnight Attack!” (Chapter Three) or “Slave Traders!” (Chapter Six), writer George H. Plympton and director Spencer G. Bennet are sure to extract as much excitement out of the situation as possible. Several chapter titles refer to the “Mystery Man of the Jungle!” (Chapter One) himself, and of those my favorite is Chapter Nine’s, “Blasted by Captain Africa!” (emphasis in original).

Best Cliffhanger: Many of the cliffhangers are not set up especially well, so they end their chapters abruptly, and they frequently suffer from the same murkiness that makes much of the serial’s action sequences so hard to follow. In addition, the feeling of going through the motions–hitting familiar perils such as animal attacks, fire, falls, and cave-ins–is readily apparent. However, there are a few sharp, well-executed, and interesting cliffhangers in the last few chapters (they must have saved the best for last). At the end of Chapter Twelve (“Fangs of the Beast!”), Captain Africa, exploring the caverns underneath the Caliph’s city, is trapped in a cell with an angry gorilla–a gorilla who, we later find out, carries a key for safe passage through the city around his neck (the “key” is a narrative repurposing of the last piece of the map to the lost city of Zoloz in the original Phantom serial). The subsequent battle is more of a choreographed fight than we have seen so far, and the chapter ends with the gorilla on top of Captain Africa, strangling the life out of him. (After turning the tables on the gorilla and escaping in the next chapter, Captain Africa modestly explains to Ted and Omar that despite appearances, captivity had made the gorilla fat and lazy: “Otherwise, I never could have beaten him.”)

Sample Dialogue: In Chapter One, a fight has broken out in a dockside watering hole.
Ted Arnold: What’s it all about?
Nat Coleman: Who knows? Perhaps nothing. Then again, it might be over something that threatens the peace of the world.

What Others Have Said: “It was over ten years before Columbia considered making a sequel to The Phantom. By this time, [producer] Sam Katzman was in charge of serials, and he was making them cheaper than anybody had ever produced union-made theatrical movies. One story has it that Katzman’s company had actually begun filming the serial before negotiations with King Features, owners of The Phantom comic strip, were completed. In any case, either before or during the production, the King Syndicate wanted too much money, and The Phantom could not be used again on the screen. At least, not exactly.” –Jim Harmon and Donald F. Glut, The Great Movie Serials

(Interestingly, while Harmon and Glut claim that Captain Africa included numerous reused shots of Tom Tyler’s Phantom, they also note that at the time of writing their book, 1972, the 1943 Phantom serial had not been available to view for many years. With the distance in time, it was surely easy to believe that the shots were identical.)

Deep in the rugged mountains between Siam and Burma, the Malcolm Archaeological Expedition has reached its destination, the Valley of the Tombs, in the shadow of Mount Scorpio. Despite warnings from local tribesmen that the Valley is taboo, John Malcolm is determined to open the sealed inner tomb, unlocking the “lost secret of the Scorpion Dynasty.” The expedition’s translator, native Tal Chotali, reads an inscription: “Let what reposes behind this stone remain hidden from the eyes of mankind for all time.” A terrible curse is about to be unleashed! The youngest member of the expedition, Billy Batson, wants no part of tomb raiding, so he leaves the room. The expedition members open the tomb without him, uncovering a fabulous scorpion-shaped idol holding a series of lenses in its claws. As soon as they move the lenses to line up with a beam of sunlight, it releases a burst of energy that shakes the earth and traps the men inside the chamber.

Meanwhile, Billy wanders into another chamber of the tomb; to his shock, a previously sealed tomb opens, and an impossibly old man steps out! Because he did not desecrate the tomb, Billy Batson is to be given the mantle of Captain Marvel to protect the innocent from the power the scorpion idol is about to unleash. Captain Marvel combines the virtues of six mythological figures: the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury. The initials of these six names combine into the magic word “Shazam” (also the name of the wizard), with which Billy transforms into Captain Marvel and back again. He is put to the test immediately, becoming Captain Marvel to rescue the explorers who have been trapped in the cave-in.

Once everyone is outside and reunited (and Billy is himself again), the members of the expedition learn just how powerful the scorpion idol is: sunlight focused through its lenses in the right order can turn ordinary rocks into gold, or generate an incredibly powerful ray (later it is referred to specifically as a “solar atom smasher”). Recognizing that the idol is too powerful for one man to control, and that it would be a target for theft, the members of the expedition divide the lenses between themselves, each man to guard and keep one safe; the power of the idol will never be used unless it is by the assent of the entire group.

That night, the expedition’s stockade is attacked by native tribesmen on horseback, led by a hooded mastermind who calls himself “the Scorpion.” The Scorpion claims to speak for the tribe’s god, and his goal is to reunite the idol with its lenses and use its power for conquest. During the assault, one of the expedition members is killed and the idol stolen. Billy Batson goes into action as Captain Marvel once again, routing the attackers, but unbeknownst to him the tribesmen have also planted dynamite beneath the bridge leading from the encampment: will the expedition’s retreat be thwarted by the explosives, or will Captain Marvel save the day? All of this occurs in the first (double length) chapter of the classic 1941 Republic serial, Adventures of Captain Marvel!

Captain Marvel, co-created by Fawcett writer Bill Parker and artist C. C. Beck, was one of many superheroes who appeared in the wake of Superman’s success, and among the most popular, even outselling Superman himself during his heyday. Much has been written elsewhere about the lawsuit National (later DC) filed against Fawcett alleging copyright infringement, and the long legal battle that followed (I have touched on it here). Ultimately, Fawcett ceased publishing Captain Marvel comics in 1953, exhausted by the legal battle and faced with declining sales, and the hero was licensed by DC in the 1970s as “Shazam” (the name “Captain Marvel” having been claimed by Marvel Comics in the interim) and bought outright in 1980; a live-action Shazam movie is scheduled to be released in 2019 as part of DC’s ongoing film universe.

As of 1941, however, Captain Marvel was riding high, and became the first comic book superhero to make the leap to the big screen (ironically enough, Republic tried to make a deal to adapt Superman first, but it ultimately fell through and Superman first appeared in theaters in a series of animated cartoons; the hero would be a latecomer to the film serials, not appearing in live action until 1948). In reading about Adventures of Captain Marvel (no “the”), I was struck by the way it follows typical serial procedure in adapting its source material, tying the hero’s origin to its villain and putting the scorpion idol and its lenses at the center of the story. I assumed that it was another case of Republic adapting the source material “in name only” as they would later do with Captain America, so it was a pleasant surprise to see how faithful to the comics the serial was in many other respects.

The biggest difference is the serial’s connection of Shazam to the Scorpion tomb, but otherwise Captain Marvel’s origin in the comics was similar: in Whiz Comics no. 2, Billy Batson, an orphaned newsboy (an actual boy, unlike the boyish young adult Billy played by Frank Coghlan, Jr. in the serial) was led to the wizard Shazam in an abandoned subway tunnel, and he was given the assignment to protect humanity as an ongoing mission rather than a specific task. But the magic word, the mythological connections, and Captain Marvel’s powers are all there. What’s more, the serial Captain Marvel (Tom Tyler) looks a great deal more like his comic book counterpart than the serial versions of Batman or Captain America do, wearing a good-looking uniform and even appearing to fly through the air.

All of the effects in this serial, by Republic’s stalwart team of Howard and Theodore Lydecker, are top-notch, including those convincing flight sequences and many of the miniatures (sorry, “scale models”) for which the Lydeckers are famous. The illusion of flight was achieved by a variety of techniques, including a papier-maché dummy strung on a wire for the long shots, cut together with shots of Tom Tyler (or his double, legendary stuntman Dave Sharpe) leaping into the air from a hidden trampoline or coming in for a landing in slow motion. (Sharpe was also responsible for Captain Marvel’s athletic moves during fight scenes, including an amazing, back-flipping kick in the first chapter.) The wires are visible in some of the shots of Tyler suspended in mid-air, clouds whizzing by, but they are easy to overlook if you are as fascinated by practical effects as I am, or if, like the young and young-at-heart audiences to which the serial is directed, you’re so swept up in the story that you don’t even notice them. The flight effects look good “for their time,” but even now one has to appreciate the ambition it took to attempt them in live action (recall that the same effects in the later Superman serials were achieved with animation). And like the best cinematic fantasy, the story, in its surging forward motion, demands belief as the price of admission where scenes viewed in isolation might provoke skepticism.

Another contrast with the comics is its tone. Captain Marvel’s adventures in the comics (mostly written by pulpsmith Otto Binder) were fantastic exercises in whimsy, often to the point of silliness, held together with fairy-tale logic or wordplay. Captain Marvel traveled to exotic foreign countries and even other planets; he fought mad scientists and magicians (his most famous recurring nemesis, Dr. Sivana, was the former); he added the growing “Marvel family” to his supporting cast, including Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel, Jr., and even “Hoppy, the Marvel Bunny”; he even made friends with a talking tiger who became his roommate! And all of this is balanced with the fantasy of being a boy but living independently (after being a newsboy, Billy Batson held down a job as an announcer for radio station WHIZ). Binder’s fanciful stories were a perfect match for Beck’s clean, simple drawing style, and the nuttiness of the plots is comparable to the mischief William Marston’s Wonder Woman would get up to over at National, but without the marked gender play (in fact, Captain Marvel is a notably prepubescent fantasy, as the hero would become nervous and shy around women, resisting the overtures of Dr. Sivana’s daughter Beautia). As Matt Singer notes (in his essay accompanying the Kino Lorber Blu-ray), the brilliance of the Billy/Captain Marvel divide was that it “fused hero and sidekick into a single figure.”

By contrast, the serial’s tone is serious, if not downright grim. Gone are Dr. Sivana’s whimsical schemes (in fact, gone is Dr. Sivana), gone are the talking animals and such fanciful locations as the “Rock of Eternity” (the heaven in which the late wizard Shazam now dwells in spirit form). Instead of being matched against other superpowered beings, Captain Marvel wastes an army of generic fedora-wearing henchmen (and I do mean wastes: writer Tom Weaver points out that Captain Marvel kills more people than the villain in this serial, throwing them off buildings or turning their own guns against them). Animation historian Jerry Beck rightly compares Captain Marvel in his scenes to a Universal monster, breaking down doors and pressing forward in the face of gunfire that bounces off of him harmlessly (at least the thugs don’t try the last-ditch effort of throwing their empty guns at him, as seen so often in the Superman TV series), his smile “more like an animal bearing its teeth.” Once the Scorpion’s men know what they’re up against, their reaction is one of sheer terror.

Other ingredients that contribute to the serious tone are standard serial fare: the archaeological expedition, as well as the curse that followed the opening of the tomb (inspired by the supposed curse of King Tut’s tomb), were common features of serials in the 1930s (and a prime inspiration for the Indiana Jones series, of course); the serial begins and ends in the Valley of the Tombs (propped up with footage from earlier movies), even though the rest of the action takes place in America. Of course the Scorpion himself, the hooded figure of evil derived from the Grand Guignol theater and the mystery novels of Edgar Wallace, is a key element of the serial vocabulary, as is the Scorpion’s methodical elimination of the expedition members, collecting their lenses one by one, even as he himself is secretly one of their number. Only in the last chapter is the Scorpion’s true identity revealed; in fact, his lines are spoken throughout by uncredited actor Gerald Mohr, just to make sure we don’t guess prematurely. (The need to avoid spoiling the surprise leads to some amusing decisions: in one chapter, the members of the expedition abandon a sinking ship and make their way to land by rope; Betty, the story’s lone female character, goes to her cabin to retrieve something, only to be knocked unconscious by the Scorpion–in costume–and left to sink with the ship. It should be obvious that the Scorpion has no reason to hide his identity from one he believes will soon be dead, and that sneaking around in costume increases the risk of being caught, but the costume is for the benefit of the audience, not the Scorpion’s victims.) Even at the end, when there are only two suspects left, and one shoots the other, revealing his true identity, the scene is filmed in shadow, the voices disguised, so as to preserve the delicious moment when Captain Marvel can pull off the captive Scorpion’s mask himself for all to see.

Still, the mood is not too heavy, leavened by swiftly-moving action and dialogue and a rapid-fire change of scenes. Coghlan’s Billy, as well as his youthful friends Whitey (William Benedict) and Betty (Louise Currie), are a big part of that, striking a “gee whiz” attitude midway between the kid-oriented comics and the deadly serious business of the Scorpion. Adventures of Captain Marvel is frequently held up as one of the best serials of all time, and it is easy to see why: all of the technical resources of Republic are working at their peak, from the Lydecker brothers’ fantastic effects to the direction of serial superteam William Witney and John English and the stirring music by Cy Feuer. A solid script provides plenty of opportunities for the cast (including, in addition to the leads, such frequently-seen character actors as John Davidson, who plays the enigmatic Tal Chotali) to develop their characters (within a framework primarily defined by action and intrigue, of course).

Furthermore, while I have sometimes expressed boredom at the formulaic nature of Republic’s later serials in comparison to the wild and weird serials of the 1930s, at the sense that they run too smoothly, Captain Marvel strikes a very satisfying balance between technical precision and characters who still act human, who are capable of surprising. (It probably helps that Republic was not yet at the point of recycling entire cliffhangers, so the situations flow organically from the story.) Betty is a good example of this: when taken captive by the Scorpion’s men, several times she sees opportunities to attempt escape and takes them rather than waiting around for Captain Marvel, even desperately grabbing the Scorpion’s own gun and attempting to shoot him. (This leads to a sequence in which Billy believes the Scorpion has an injured hand and tries to flush him out by gathering the expedition members together.) In addition to lending an unpredictable realism to the proceedings, Betty’s actions (and similar unexpected actions by other characters) drive the story forward: neither the Scorpion nor Captain Marvel have everything their way all the time.

Finally, I have occasionally noticed a generational divide in how the fanciful comic books of the Golden Age and its related media are received, and the commentary on the Blu-ray provides an illuminating example: Tom Weaver, a self-described Baby Boomer, mentions going back to read some of the original Captain Marvel comics (for the first time, as an adult) and his disgust at their silliness is palpable. “The comic book is so juvenile,” he reports, “that I can’t imagine who read it and thought ‘This might be good for a Republic serial.'” He complains that Otto Binder’s Captain cracks corny jokes while fighting, as if that weren’t something common to almost every superhero before the 1980s. For him, and for many viewers like him, the seriousness of the serial is a step up, a necessary refinement of material that is otherwise not worthy of consideration. By contrast, younger viewers and readers, especially those who may have already encountered Captain Marvel in reprints or through one of his post-1970s television iterations at a young age (and that may be the real key, the “Golden Age” being twelve years old and all that), readily accept the childlike fantasy inherent in the character. (On the Blu-ray it is the hosts of the podcast Comic Geek Speak, children of the 1970s and ’80s by the sound of it, who represent this point of view, but I have encountered it among comics fans younger than myself as well.)

Perhaps the balance of light and darkness is the reason Adventures of Captain Marvel continues to be held in such esteem: it convincingly brings to life the power fantasy of the comic book superhero, without treating it as a joke or cutting corners, and satisfies those who like their heroes “grim and gritty,” at least in contrast to the source material; at the same time the line between good and evil is boldly drawn, the characters larger than life, and it is still full of the wonder and excitement of the serial medium and marvelously entertaining in its own right.

What I Watched:Adventures of Captain Marvel (Republic, 1941)

Where I Watched It: Kino Lorber’s Blu-ray release from 2017. As mentioned above, this edition has an informative commentary track including ten speakers (thankfully not all at once: each individual or group gets a chapter or two to themselves) and Matt Singer’s essay. It is, as I have mentioned in the past, exactly the kind of package the serials have long deserved and is highly recommended. However, as I don’t have a Blu-ray drive on my computer, I have once again taken pictures of the screen for screenshots (rest assured that the Blu-ray picture quality is much higher than these pictures show).

No. of Chapters: 12

Best Chapter Title: “Death Takes the Wheel” (Chapter Four)

Best Cliffhanger: Several of the commentators on the Kino Lorber release take issue with the idea that anyone would be fooled by a cliffhanger that appears to put the invincible Captain Marvel in jeopardy: wouldn’t an audience of kids in 1941 know that something as trivial as gunfire, electric shock, or even molten lava wouldn’t hurt “the world’s mightiest mortal”? Well, yes, and like the later Superman serials, Adventures of Captain Marvel solves this problem by putting supporting cast members in peril instead for most of the cliffhangers. Still, almost any serial cliffhanger assumes that the audience will play along, even if experienced viewers are well aware that the hero is going to get out of whatever jam they’ve been put in: suspension of disbelief applies here just as it does elsewhere.

More importantly, from a narrative perspective, the limits of Captain Marvel’s powers and invulnerability aren’t entirely clear at first, and the serial’s early cliffhangers serve to demonstrate just how strong he is. My favorite cliffhanger is one of these: in Chapter Two (“The Guillotine”), the Scorpion has his henchmen abduct Dr. Carlyle, one of the expedition members, and threaten him with an automated guillotine in order to extract the location of Carlyle’s lens. Captain Marvel trails the thugs to their hideout and breaks up the interrogation. However, during the fight that follows, he trips into the electric eye that triggers a subduing electric charge and starts the conveyor belt that will carry him, unconscious, to the waiting guillotine, a high-tech variation of a classic peril. The resolution illustrates the difference between typical serial protagonists and this new kind of cinematic “super” hero: instead of having Captain Marvel wake up or the conveyor turned off just in time, the next chapter begins with the blade falling onto the hero’s neck, only to break harmlessly against Captain Marvel’s invulnerable skin. I’ve complained in the past about “walk it off” resolutions to cliffhangers in which the hero is simply unhurt, but here the shot of Captain Marvel waking up beneath the shattered blade speaks for itself. Like the scenes of henchmen futilely shooting at Captain Marvel, the bullets bouncing harmlessly off, it announces that this hero plays by an entirely different set of rules.

Stanley Price Sighting: Stanley Price is included in the full cast billing that begins each chapter, but he really only has one standout scene, as one of the group of henchmen who abduct Betty after she trails them to one of their hideouts on the top floor of a parking garage. It is here that Captain Marvel engages them in the rooftop battle in which he throws an engine block at one thug and throws another off the roof. Knowing that he’s outgunned, Price flees in the elevator, only to have Captain Marvel pull the descending car back up by the cables, a feat borrowed from his comic book appearances. Price’s anxious expressions while standing alone in the elevator are, well . . . priceless (sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Sample Dialogue: “The Scorpion has triumphed and all the white infidels will be sacrificed to celebrate the victory, even the mighty Captain Marvel. . . . We need fear him no longer, for he is only Billy Batson. . . . Perhaps it’s a powerful drug or some other device which Batson uses to transform himself into Captain Marvel. . . . I must learn the secret of his transformation.” –the Scorpion, Chapter Twelve (“Captain Marvel’s Secret”)

What Others Have Said: “The saving grace is the near absence of what many serial devotees most like about Republic serials–the stuntwork fist fights. Captain Marvel was too superpowerful to take more than one punch to subdue an ordinary mortal. The screen time had to be filled with something other than punches. This serial had time for plot and characterization, as well as action. The result was what may be the world’s mightiest movie serial.” –Jim Harmon and Donald F. Glut, The Great Movie Serials

What’s Next: Join me in two weeks as I return to the subject of “Yellow Peril” with Drums of Fu Manchu!

As Atom Man vs. Superman begins, a crime wave has overtaken Metropolis, the kind of multi-pronged gang assault on property and lives that frequently opens the first chapter of serials, even though the Depression-era violence that inspired it was long-gone by 1950. Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent* suspects that a single criminal mastermind is behind it, secretly organizing and coordinating the atrocities. But who? A bulbous, oversized helmet is superimposed over the montage of stock footage and spinning newspaper headlines, the “Atom Man” of the title, but Clark believes that to be merely a cover for Superman’s arch-enemy, Lex Luthor. In this very first chapter (“Superman Flies Again”), Superman uses his X-ray vision to locate Luthor’s hideout and capture him. Yet over the next year, the crimes continue! Was Clark Kent wrong about Luthor (who claims to have gone straight and is applying for parole)? Is the Atom Man an entirely different villain?

What’s notable here is the degree to which the characters and their relationship are already established at the outset: not only is it taken for granted that audiences will know Lex Luthor, but he is caught and imprisoned within the first episode in the manner of a modern action film’s “cold open.” (Of course, Luthor is up to something, but that’s beside the point.) The assumption that audiences wouldn’t need to have things explained to them was a safe one for the filmmakers, of course: Superman was widely read in comic book form and heard on his own radio show (from which the plot of this serial was adapted); as I mentioned in my review of the previous Superman serial, that familiarity kept the producers from making too many changes to the source material in adapting it, and the faithfulness to the original says as much about the popularity of Superman as it does about the fickleness of filmmakers. It’s worth noting, in fact, that serial adaptations from comic strips were generally more faithful than those from comic books, a reflection of the newspaper strips’ higher status in those days. (It’s possible that the subtle touches in Atom Man vs. Superman also reflect an awareness of the audience’s greater sophistication by 1950, as well.)

In any case, Atom Man vs. Superman is one of the few serials I’ve seen that takes its audience’s awareness of the characters and setup for granted, going so far as to subvert their expectations for suspense or comic relief. For example, more than once when Clark Kent ducks into a doorway to transform into his alter ego, fellow reporter Lois Lane follows him under the impression that Clark is trying to scoop her or keep himself out of danger. If he can’t turn into Superman, how will he save the day? Or will Lois learn his secret identity? Something always comes along to protect Clark’s secret and allow him to make the switch, but Lois’s growing suspicions are a major subplot: not only does she ask out loud, “Is Clark Superman?”, she has Daily Planet editor Perry White so convinced that he almost publishes a front page story saying so. Ultimately, the status quo is preserved, but rarely short of Superman II have I seen a Superman film in which the truth floats so close to the surface.

It makes a difference, as well, that Atom Man vs. Superman is the sequel to an earlier serial that does begin with the hero’s origin, and this particular story was adapted from a storyline from the radio show The Adventures of Superman. (And how odd is it that the title follows the familiar “______ vs. ______” format, but unusually puts the antagonist’s name first?) All of the major players from the first serial return (including leading man Kirk Alyn, credited as only “Superman,” maintaining the fiction that the man himself showed up to film his own adventures), with the addition of Lyle Talbot as Lex Luthor. Talbot’s Luthor is just like we remember him: brilliant, egotistical, and bald; he is both the “mad scientist” of his earliest comic book incarnations and the smooth-talking public figure of later stories. Luthor has always been a complex and captivating foil for Superman, but his human strengths and failings are especially clear in comparison to the masked villains typical of the serials. (The serial hardly makes a secret of the fact that Atom Man is a convenient front for Luthor: while he “goes straight,” he receives threats from the Atom Man on behalf of the criminal underworld Luthor has supposedly turned his back on. But everyone knows that Atom Man’s plans and Luthor’s are one and the same.)

The main plot involves criminals, including one already in custody of the police, who mysteriously disappear whenever they flash a particular silver coin, making for some miraculous escapes and frustrating Superman’s attempts to connect their crimes to the Atom Man. As it turns out, these “activated coins” are signal beacons for a “space transporter,” a teleportation beam developed by Lex Luthor (and the solution to his continued leadership even while in solitary confinement: he just uses his own coin and has his henchmen beam him to his hideout for an hour or two, and then he goes back before the prison guards are any wiser). The coins and the transporter are significant devices throughout the serial, with Luthor using them to slip from one hiding place to another; help his underlings stay out of the grasp of Superman or the police; bait traps for Superman and the Daily Planet reporters; and even kidnap Lois Lane (Noel Neill) by sending her one of these medallions. The coins also further the plot when one of the coins is recovered and Luthor schemes to get it back before it can be analyzed.

But the technology underlying the space transporter is also capable of sending its target’s atoms into space, “where they will circle endlessly” without solidity, a fate Luthor refers to as “the Empty Doom.” At one point he uses it briefly on one of his underlings as punishment for failure, demonstrating its effectiveness but also revealing that the effects can be undone. Luthor’s ultimate plan is to consign Superman to the Empty Doom, ridding himself of his archenemy forever; he succeeds, but only for a chapter. While in this state, Superman is insubstantial and invisible (except to the audience, through the miracle of double exposure), as if on the astral plane, or like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. The scenes in which Superman, in double exposure against a background of planets and stars, struggles with a henchman sent to check on him (and here the Empty Doom functions more like the comics’ Phantom Zone), are great fun, and in some ways closer to the loopier sci-fi elements of the comics than we usually get when the character is adapted to film. Through great effort, he is able to communicate with Lois through her electric typewriter, and eventually his instructions to her help him break free.

The space transporter isn’t the only high-tech invention Luthor brings to bear in his war against Superman, but it does get the most screen time. Luthor also has an “atomic projectile” (a high-powered mortar shell that Superman simply catches and returns against its operator, exactly the same as when the Spider Lady tried the same thing in the last Superman serial); a remote control flying saucer; a robot (spoiler!); an earthquake machine; an atom bomb (there’s a lot of nuclear anxiety in this serial, from the title on down); and even a spaceship! At one point, Luthor synthesizes his own Kryptonite, a step up from the “synthetic radium” that so many serials feature; however, to make it work correctly, Luthor’s Kryptonite requires just one ingredient he must steal: radium! Oh, well. There is a clever sequence in which Luthor manipulates Superman into using his X-ray vision on a box of nails: Luthor has prepared an alloy that turns into plutonium when bombarded with X-rays, tricking Superman into generating the fuel that will be used against him.

And of course there’s television; at first, Luthor earns his parole by offering a new invention to the government, a “combination of radar and television.” Regular readers of this series will be aware of my interest in how television was presented in the serials, as an almost-magical scrying device that allowed remote viewing even of places inaccessible to cameras. By 1950, television was less a futuristic pipe-dream than a definite reality with a growing audience, and viewers and filmmakers alike were now aware of the medium’s limitations, so super-science was invoked to make it exciting (and useful to the plot) again. The only difference between the fantastical view of television common in the 1930s and its use in Atom Man is the gloss that presents Luthor’s device as a new spin on the now-familiar medium. At the same time, television is an everyday occurrence, with Luthor setting up a mundane television studio as a cover for his more esoteric spying. (Hilariously, the cover blurb on the DVD claims that Luthor “says he’s just a simple repairman for those new devices called televisions!”, a synopsis that is garbled at best.) At one point, Lois Lane goes to work for Luthor as an on-camera personality, mostly for tepid “man-on-the-street” interviews. Although regular broadcast television is shown in a decidedly unthrilling light, it wouldn’t be long before the new medium killed theatrical serials for good, or rather absorbed them, as low-budget storytelling-by-installment became the default mode of TV entertainment, even including the Man of Steel himself.

What I Watched:Atom Man vs. Superman (Columbia, 1950)

Where I Watched It:Superman: The Theatrical Serials Collection DVD set

No. of Chapters: 15

Best Chapter Title: “Superman Saves the Universe” (Chapter Fifteen) Well, what else would we expect Superman to do?

Best Cliffhanger: Although there are more than a few classic perils here, Atom Man vs. Superman finds the filmmakers chafing at the formal restriction of the end-of-chapter cliffhanger. Some of the chapters end with one or more characters in a state of uncertainty rather than immediate peril: at the end of Chapter Seven (“At the Mercy of Atom Man!”), Superman, weakened by Luthor’s synthetic Kryptonite, is loaded unconscious onto an ambulance which the audience knows is being driven by Luthor’s henchmen. Not only does Superman not get out of trouble immediately in the next chapter by escaping or undoing the peril as in so many serials, he is forced to step into Luthor’s matter transporter and face the “empty doom,” from which he doesn’t escape until the next chapter after that!

In other cases, the cliffhangers are perfunctory: rather than being set up with the heavy-handed foreshadowing so common to the Republic formula, dangers are thrown up at the last minute, as when Jimmy Olsen (Tommy Bond), chasing an escaping henchman, gets his foot stuck in a railroad bed and can’t escape an oncoming train. The train has nothing to do with the events that have come before, but it’s the end of the chapter, so something has to happen. Both examples are probably extensions of the playful formula-tweaking mentioned above: by 1950, even kid audiences were ready for twists on familiar material. Fortunately, the awareness that cliffhangers alone weren’t enough to satisfy audiences pushed the filmmakers to create interest in other ways, through character and novel special effects. (As in the previous serial, animation is used to depict Superman’s flight as well as other effects too expensive to create otherwise.)

Having said that, there is at least one truly great cliffhanger in this serial: in Chapter Fourteen, “Rocket of Vengeance,” Lex Luthor sends a missile loaded with an atomic bomb to destroy Metropolis, his final act of defiance before taking off into space, leaving the Earth behind forever. Superman intercepts the missile, climbing on top and riding it, Dr. Strangelove-style, as it heads straight for the Daily Planet building and the office of Perry White (Pierre Watkin). The sequence, which cuts between close-ups of Superman riding the missile, shots of the city from the missile’s point of view, and White, Lois, and Jimmy watching its approach, is among the most exciting in this serial.

Sample Dialogue:

Lois: Let’s head back to the office.
Jimmy: What for, to be hit by that rocket?
Lois: We’ll write the story, even if it’s our last one.
Jimmy: I’d rather read about it.
–Chapter Fourteen, “Rocket of Vengeance”

What Others Have Said: “Atom Man vs. Superman was far more gimmicky and gadget-prone than the first serial, Superman, but was flawed by the same [producer Sam] Katzman cheapness in production values, despite the cast and crew.” –Jim Harmon and Donald F. Glut, The Great Movie Serials

Unlike many of the costumed heroes who made the leap to serials, not only does Superman not need an introduction, but the 1948 Columbia serial bearing his name is remarkably faithful to the comic books in which he regularly appeared. Any modern reader or viewer should recognize the character’s origin, set forth in the first chapter, “Superman Comes to Earth”: on the faraway planet Krypton, scientist Jor-El attempts to convince the ruling council that the planet is doomed, a victim of gravitational forces that will soon lead to its complete destruction. Unable to convince them, Jor-El places his infant son Kal-El in a test rocket and launches him to Earth, just before the planet explodes. After landing in a rural part of America (not yet “Smallville”) on Earth, baby Kal-El is adopted and raised by the Kents, a childless couple who instill in their adopted son “Clark” a sense of justice and fair play, even as he develops superhuman strength and incredible abilities. Chapter One ends with Clark Kent on his way to Metropolis to use his powers for the good of mankind.

Also unlike some other serial heroes, Superman wasn’t the character’s first representation outside of comics. Since the first publication of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s creation in Action Comics no. 1 in 1938, Superman had been a best-selling comic book and newspaper strip character; headlined a radio show (since 1940); and appeared in animated shorts (seventeen cartoons from Fleischer and Famous Studios between 1941 and 1943). It would have been hard to find even a casual follower of popular fiction who didn’t know who Superman was, and that above all may have encouraged producer Sam Katzman to stick to the established mythology. That meant not only keeping Superman’s origin the same, but keeping him at the Daily Planet with Lois Lane, Perry White, and Jimmy Olsen (who first appeared as a named character on the radio show in 1940), rather than creating a new cast of characters. It also meant including Kryptonite (introduced on the radio in 1943 and the comics only in 1947), the fragments of Superman’s exploded home planet, the radiation of which was the one force on Earth that could weaken him.

There were still some differences, however, most notably the serial’s choice of villain: the Spider Lady, a blonde woman in a black evening gown and domino mask, is very much within the serial tradition: she has no origin or backstory, no powers of her own, and her persona is “criminal mastermind, but slightly vampier.” (Superman’s archenemy Lex Luthor would appear in the following serial, 1950’s Atom Man vs. Superman.) More importantly, she holds off on direct confrontations with Superman, prolonging the story by working through her agents, fedora-wearing henchmen with names like Driller and Brock. They may be caught, but she continues her evil work until the last chapter and her inevitable comeuppance. Like her namesake, she sits at the center of a web (literally–the web is an important backdrop of her scenes, and it proves to be electrified, a fitting method of punishing underlings who fail her), plotting and scheming.

Also true to the serial style is the macguffin, a sort of death ray called the Relativity Reducer Ray, developed for the government by Professor Graham, guarded by Superman (so it doesn’t “fall into the wrong hands”), and coveted by the Spider Lady. Described as more powerful than the atomic bomb, the Reducer Ray deals death by remote control: in Chapter Three, which introduces both the Ray and the Spider Lady, a test demonstrates its ability to destroy buildings at a distance by feeding coordinates into its internal computing mechanism. The Ray provides plenty of plot possibilities, whether it’s the Spider Lady’s attempts to stop the test; her attempts to steal, and later copy, the Ray; her kidnapping and later mind-control of the Ray’s inventor, Professor Graham; and her use of it to threaten the Daily Planet itself once she has a functioning copy.

Lois Lane: Poet of the Apocalypse

Finally, the Spider Lady has her own scientist, Dr. Hackett (Charles Quigley), described as “brilliant” but “with a warped mind,” whom she breaks out of jail to aid her; what his previous crimes were is never stated, but he proves to be an ambitious, treacherous character, and his alliance with his patroness an uneasy one. All of these elements serve to provide exciting, varied episodes of action and suspense, many of them based on classic serial premises (e.g., there are mine cave-ins and car chases, and Lois and Jimmy get tied up more than once), but each connected to the central threat of the Spider Lady and enlivened by clever plotting and witty dialogue.

Superman is played by Kirk Alyn (although not according to the title credits: Columbia’s marketers claimed that no actor could be found to convincingly portray the Man of Steel, so they simply got the real thing), who would go on to headline several more serials. Alyn mostly strikes a note of hearty good cheer and optimism as the hero (even when banging two gangsters’ heads together to knock them out he jokes “Sometimes I don’t know my own strength!”), and his Clark Kent is amusingly sketchy. In Chapter Two, Clark essentially gets his position on the Planet (with no prior experience or references) by scooping Lois, and throughout the serial she snipes at him for what she perceives as underhanded maneuvering (she gets her own back a few times as well). She rightly suspects that Clark is simply playing dumb when conversation turns to Superman and his tendency to show up when he’s gone, but she never suspects the truth.

Although Clark’s coworkers chide him for his tendency to duck out when trouble is brewing, Alyn makes this foible seem like the product of bumbling rather than cowardice (and of course, we in the audience know what he’s really up to). Through a variety of special effects, including undercranking (to depict Superman’s super-speed), double exposure (for X-ray vision), and hand-drawn animation for flying sequences, just about all of Superman’s established powers come into play during the story. And of course, the serial format guarantees that he’ll appear in costume at least once in every chapter, whether it’s to laugh off a gangster’s bullets (depicted bouncing off Superman’s chest, again with animation), stop a fire by blowing it out with his super breath, or to catch a flying shell and boomerang it back toward the gun that fired it. Superman even uses his X-ray vision to see through a disguise while looking at a photograph–quite a feat, even for him. Alyn distinguishes Clark from Superman with his voice as well, using a light, wishy-washy tone for Clark and a deeper chest voice for Superman, a transformation made audible (in imitation of the radio serial) every time Clark Kent in voice over says, “This looks like a job for [sudden drop to chest voice] SUPERMAN!”

Noel Neill (who passed away just last year) imbues Lois Lane with the brassy, no-nonsense quality the character had absorbed during the war years, inspired by His Girl Friday and the like (and which would largely be domesticated in the coming 1950s). The frequently-depicted romantic triangle between Clark, Lois, and Superman is absent in the serial, but is replaced by a professional rivalry; as mentioned, Lois takes potshots at Clark mercilessly (“What now, little man?” is a typical gibe), but it’s an understandable attitude when she is frequently consigned to writing “women’s stories” about recipes or fashion while Clark gets the headlines.

In addition to driving the plot, the tension between the pair is a natural source of comedy, with Perry White (Pierre Watkin)and Jimmy Olsen (Tommy Bond, formerly Butch in the Our Gang shorts) also contributing to the quippy, fast-paced scenes. (As an aside, it’s nice to have a humorous tone carried by dialogue and situation, rather than a single “comic relief” character, as in the Republic formula.)

As the Spider Lady, Carol Forman is a haughty, imperious villainess in the classic style. She doesn’t do much, but preening and pontificating are enough for this type of character: other than her electrified web, it appears to be the power of her will and ruthless pursuit of her goals alone that keep her underlings in line. There is one scene, however, probably meant as a throwaway, that deepens the character’s mystery: in Chapter Nine (“Irresistible Force!”), the only time in the serial that the Spider Lady leaves her lair, she goes to the airport disguised as Lois Lane to trick Professor Graham, the Reducer Ray’s inventor, into accompanying her. Throughout the serial, the Spider Lady has been a blonde, but in preparing to disguise herself, she removes a blonde wig to reveal a head of dark hair.

At no other time is it even suggested that she is wearing a disguise, and she’s a blonde for the rest of the serial. Visually, the Spider Lady (whom Harmon and Glut in The Great Movie Serials describe as “faintly foreign” in appearance) changes from a Veronica Lake type to a more fitting Myrna Loy type, perhaps revealing her true colors. (Or perhaps it’s nothing more than an inside joke: Forman was naturally a brunette, and had played another spider-themed villainess for Superman director Spencer Bennet the year before in The Black Widow. Forman didn’t want to be typecast as a villain, but she played several in the serials.) Serials didn’t generally go in for the duality of hero and villain, but when you have a blank slate of a character like the Spider Lady, any suggestion of depth, however subtle, makes an impression. As Clark Kent would be the first to acknowledge, sometimes it’s the appearance you wear every day that is the real disguise.

What I Watched:Superman (Columbia, 1948)

Where I Watched It:Superman: The Theatrical Serials Collection, a 4-DVD set from DC/Warner Home Video

No. of Chapters: 15

Best Chapter Title: “Superman to the Rescue” (Chapter Eight)

Best Cliffhanger:Superman features many good cliffhangers, including some classics, such as the car speeding off a cliff, and an unconscious victim placed on a conveyor belt, headed toward doom, among others. Wisely, once Superman’s invulnerability is established in the first few chapters, the filmmakers don’t try to convince us that the Man of Steel is going to be killed by something as pedestrian as a gunshot or an explosion, and the only cliffhangers that leave his fate in doubt involve Kryptonite. Rather, it’s Superman’s friends who face peril at the end of each chapter, the question being whether Superman will get there in time to rescue them (a few chapters end with Superman entangled in some other problem that will presumably leave him unavailable) or if they will find their own way out of the danger. (In the examples I mentioned above, it’s Lois Lane in the speeding car and Jimmy Olsen on the conveyor belt; at the end of another chapter, Perry White is thrown out the window of his office, hanging onto the ledge by his fingertips.)

At the end of Chapter Fourteen (“Superman at Bay”), the Spider Lady has finally gotten Professor Graham’s Reducer Ray working, and to test it she has the Professor aim its destructive force at the corner of the jail in which her henchman Anton and Dr. Hackett are being held (she will demonstrate the ray’s power and eliminate some “useless people” at one stroke). Unbeknownst to her (not that it would make any difference), Lois Lane is visiting the two inmates at the jail in hopes of persuading them to talk, and she is present when the power of the ray manifests in the form of an intense glow. An explosion ends the chapter. (At the beginning of Chapter Fifteen, Superman, having overheard the Spider Lady’s instructions, flies to the jail to swoop in and carry Lois to safety, leaving Hackett and the other inmates to suck eggs, I guess. A newspaper headline following the incident notes “Many Prisoners Killed.” They don’t get top billing, though.)

The Annie Wilkes Award for Most Blatant Cheat: The resolution to the cliffhanger I described above involves a bit of a cheat, but the winner is the cliffhanger that ends Chapter Eleven (“Superman’s Dilemma”) and its resolution. Chapter Eleven focuses on “mono-chromite,” a secret ingredient needed for the Reducer Ray, and the lengths to which the Spider Lady’s henchmen go to obtain it. Two of the Spider Lady’s operatives show up at a chemical engineer’s office demanding mono-chromite. Since it’s a restricted material, the engineer puts the men off and contacts Perry White. Lois gets the jump on Clark by telling him to take her car and then reporting it stolen, so that Clark is picked up by the police and taken to jail: there may not be a jail built that can hold Superman, but he can’t afford to jeopardize his secret identity by breaking out or overpowering a policeman! In the mean time, Lois and Jimmy get to the engineer’s office and conceive a plan: Jimmy hides in a packing crate marked “mono-chromite” so that when the Spider Lady’s men pick it up, he’ll be taken straight to her lair! Unfortunately, when the crate comes open during the drive back, the drivers get suspicious and stop to check on it. One of the thugs sees Jimmy’s fingers closing the crate, so he and the other henchman open fire and shoot the crate full of holes.

But wait! As the next chapter begins, we see Clark Kent in his jail cell change into Superman. He bundles up Clark Kent’s clothing under the blanket on his bunk to hide his disappearance and, bending the bars on the window easily, flies off to rescue Jimmy. Not only does he know exactly where to find his pal (Jimmy doesn’t yet have his famous signal watch in this serial, but Superman finds him anyway), he has time to take his place in the crate, so that when the driver begins shooting (and it’s only one henchman shooting in this chapter, not both as in the previous cliffhanger), the bullets bounce harmlessly off him. After knocking out the gangsters and tying them up at super-speed, Superman flies back to the jail and resumes Clark Kent’s identity, just in time for the jailer to let him out, having confirmed his identity from Perry White. Whew! It’s all in a day’s work for (sudden basso profundo) Superman!

NOT a dream! NOT an imaginary story! “Clark Kent: Super-JAILBIRD!”

Sample Dialogue:

Lois (regaining consciousness): How did we get here?
Clark: Superman got us out through a hole he made in the side of that hill.
Lois: He’s wonderful isn’t he, Clark?
Clark: I guess so.
Lois: You guess so? . . . Say, weren’t these handcuffs on our other hands before?

–Chapter Thirteen, “Hurled to Destruction”

What Others Have Said: “As Superman, Kirk Alyn looks the part. He was a former Broadway chorus boy who’d worked his way up to become a Columbia day player, and his athletic form required little in the way of muscle padding. (If he doesn’t quite live up to the illustration on the serial’s movie poster–Superman as a downright steroidal mountain of muscle–few men of the day could.)”
–Glen Weldon, Superman: The Unauthorized Biography

It’s funny that I don’t consider myself that much of a TV watcher anymore, at least compared to the amount of time I spend watching movies, but when I look back over the past year, I did watch enough to at least write about. (Sorry for the lack of pictures; I’m traveling this week and short on time. As much as I’d like to believe my deathless prose and penetrating insights are the reason people visit Medleyana, it’s an incontestable truth that pictures drive traffic. Don’t worry, my roundup of 2016’s films, set to run later this week, has plenty of pics.)

At the beginning of the year, I caught ABC’s two mid-season short series, Galavant and Marvel’s Agent Carter, both in their second (and, alas, final) seasons. Agent Carter was the 1940s-set spinoff of Hayley Atwell’s popular character from Captain America: The First Avenger, and continued the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s pattern of filling in details of its world. In this case, that meant spending more time with Howard Stark, father of future Iron Man Tony, and his man Jarvis (and filling in more of his backstory). However, it put off the foundation of SHIELD as once more Agent Carter found herself working on the outside (a situation that allows for both more drama and more overt commentary on the difficulty women found finding a place in postwar society once the boys came back from fighting).

The second series found Carter traveling to Los Angeles and getting mixed up in a case involving “zero matter,” a mysterious power source with links to another dimension, and one that, if uncontrolled, threatened to destroy the world. Zero matter was also part of the origin of the season’s antagonist, actress/scientific genius Whitney Frost (a barely fictionalized Hedy Lamarr). Frost’s frustration at being held back by men’s low expectations, revealed in flashback, and the way she eventually obtained power through manipulating men (as a movie star, as the power behind a rising politician, and as the lover of a mob boss) made for an interesting counterpoint with Carter’s own struggles living in a “man’s world.” The first Captain America film and the Agent Carter series have been some of my favorite parts of the MCU, so it’s unfortunate that Agent Carter won’t be returning for a third season (and with Carter’s death from old age in the current movies, we probably won’t be seeing much more of Atwell in the MCU unless there’s a special or a flashback, as in Ant-Man).

Galavant also ended after only two seasons: the musical comedy spoof was a favorite of mine in its first season, as the charming and dashing title character (played by Joshua Sasse) sought to rescue the love of his life, Madalena (Mallory Jansen), from the dastardly King Richard (Timothy Omundson) while teaming up with another princess (Karen David) displaced by Richard’s conquest. That traditional-sounding fairy tale setup was consistently undermined at every turn: Galavant, despite his rakish charisma, was a washed up has-been, supported in his return to form by his plucky squire (Luke Youngblood, memorable from Community for his turn as Magnum); Madalena turned out to not be waiting for her prince to rescue her, but was a more practical-minded gold-digger who considered being the King’s wife an upgrade: or at least she would if King Richard weren’t so ineffectual and childish. The second season explored the fallout of these character dynamics, with Madalena becoming a full-fledged power-hungry villainess and Richard, unseated from his own throne, befriending Galavant and discovering his latent capacity for heroism. Both seasons came to life with knowing references to clichés from both fantasy and musicals, with songs by Alan Mencken and an experienced theater cast to bring them to life (as well as a number of guest stars, ranging from John Hamm to “Weird Al” Yankovic) and finding time for moments for side characters such as the put-upon chef (Darren Evans) and his romance with fellow servant Gwynne (Sophie McShera), hilariously plagued by the life-shortening hazards of medieval life.

In the same vein, I caught up this year with the first season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, the star vehicle of actress-singer-songwriter Rachel Bloom. I’m not sure if I was even aware of Bloom before this year, but Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was one of the most talked-about shows in my circle of friends, and after getting started with Anthony Pizzo’s excellent articles on Bloom’s earlier songs and videos, I jumped on board. Like Galavant, the show is made by and for musical theater fans, with each hour-long episode including two or three songs in a variety of styles, reflecting the inner state of mind of Bloom’s alter ego, musical-obsessed Rebecca Bunch. As laid out in the show’s theme song (ironically, the weakest song in the show), Rebecca was a high-powered but deeply unhappy lawyer in New York City until a chance encounter with Josh Chan, the boy with whom she had a brief summer romance at theater camp years ago. Impulsively, she moves to Josh’s hometown of West Covina, California, and begins a new life, stalking Josh and talking herself into ever-more complicated situations, all while denying to herself that that’s why she moved there.

One could call it a deconstruction of I Love Lucy-style screwball antics, and as her earlier work suggested, Bloom is uniquely qualified to balance the comedy and pathos of a fundamentally damaged character. Given my adoration of Community, which similarly made comedy out of a sometimes-bleak perspective, it should be no surprise that I fell hard for this show (even though it took me half a year to finish the whole season, and I haven’t even started on season two).

I’ve also been enjoying the renaissance of DC superhero television, particularly Supergirl (which was somewhat uneven in its first season, but has delivered tighter action sequences and vastly improved character work this fall). Star Melissa Benoist is perfectly cast as the title character and is well served by an ensemble that has grown stronger (even with the unfortunate departure of Calista Flockhart as mentor Cat Grant). Aside from the show’s winningly optimistic spirit, Supergirl is also a treat for eagle-eyed fans, (for example) working in a reference to the “evil” Superman from Superman III or casting former TV Wonder Woman Lynda Carter as the President.

Another DC program, Legends of Tomorrow, was frequently awkward in its first season, but with the defeat of lame villain Vandal Savage and the exit of the equally lame Hawk people, the show has greatly improved in its second season, with a less heavy tone and more connection to the greater DC universe (both leaning into its time travel gimmick to feature characters like Western antihero Jonah Hex or the World War II-era Justice Society of America), even crossing over with the other DC shows in a faithful approximation of the comic books’ “multiverse” of parallel worlds.

Although not connected to the “Arrowverse” DC shows, and generally a show that I drop in and out of rather than watch faithfully, Gotham (a sort of prequel series about future Batman Bruce Wayne as a young boy) has had its moments. The best of all was a mini-arc in which Penguin (Robin Lord Taylor, channeling Crispin Glover’s alien charisma) was reunited with his father (guest star Paul Reubens, who had a cameo as the Penguin’s father in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns). While warmly received by his wealthy father, Penguin was not welcomed by his father’s family, to whom Penguin was simply a freak and an unwelcome intrusion into their plans to inherit the Cobblepot fortune. Over a handful of episodes, this sequence spun from heartfelt reunion to black comedy, and showed the reformed Penguin re-embracing his capacity for violence. It was the show’s high point as far as I’m concerned.

Finally, my summer was dominated by two science fiction programs: BrainDead, which I’ve already written about, and Stranger Things, the breakout Netflix series. Stranger Things got a lot of attention for its slavish recreation of an early 1980s aesthetic (primarily drawing from the work of John Carpenter, Stephen King, and Steven Spielberg, but with nods to John Hughes and Freaks and Geeks), but I don’t think it would have worked or been the sensation it was without its central ensemble of youthful actors. Its moody, Carpenteresque synth soundtrack also set just the right tone.